The present invention relates to the construction of a wall including, for example, glass blocks and separator strips.
Walls, both interior and exterior, are typically made of elements, such as stone, bricks, and blocks of cinder or glass. These wall elements are typically laid up with a hardenable material between the individual elements, such hardenable material being, for example, mortar, cement, or grout. These materials have in common that they are moldable at room temperature or ambient temperature and become hard and rigid after being put in place. These materials are typically made from mixtures of dry materials and a liquid such as water, which are mixed as needed to make the moldable cement, mortar or grout, the stone, bricks or blocks being laid upon a bed of such material, with the ends and top and bottom in engagement with a layer of such material. In some cases, grouting material, which is extrudable or moldable at room temperature or ambient temperature, is used, but usually for waterproofing, rather than as a load-bearing component of the erected wall.
Glass blocks have been used as components of walls in more recent times, glass blocks having gained substantial popularity and comparatively extensive use in the fourth and fifth decades of the Twentieth Century. Glass blocks were used as components of walls for either decorative purposes, or to permit the passage of light therethrough, or both. Typically, glass block walls were constructed using mortar, but glass blocks not requiring mortar have been suggested.
Hohl 2,141,000 discloses a wall which is made of glass blocks, and without mortar, grout, cement or other material which is moldable at room temperature or ambient temperature and which becomes hardened. The glass blocks are separated by elongate plates or strips which extend horizontally between rows, being of substantial length: vertical strips extend between adjacent blocks in a row, and between the separator strips at the top and bottom of each row. The strips have webs which are provided at their sides with flanges having curved surfaces which match the curvature of the shoulders of the glass blocks. These flanges are somewhat bell-shaped in cross-section, and when the wall is viewed in elevation, the end faces of the flanges occupy substantially the same space which would be occupied by conventional mortar. The strips are extruded metal, or may be of formed sheet metal. The strips which extend horizontally have tongues at their ends, which extend through openings in vertical side strips, and are held by nails which extend through the holes in these tongues. As a consequence, the distance between the vertical strips at each side of the wall is a predetermined, fixed distance, and the construction inherently assumes a constant, unvarying size of the blocks used, whereas in fact the glass blocks exhibit some small but significant variation in size from the norm; this variation is not accommodated by the construction of Hohl 2,141,000. This construction entails some difficulty in assembling the horizontal strips to the vertical side strips, since only a narrow space is provided, between the strips and the space or opening in which the glass block wall is constructed for the insertion of the nails. Further, the construction requires a facing strip to cover the extending tongues and holding nails.
There has been suggested, in addition, in Nichols 2,326,245 a similar construction, in which a wall of glass blocks and strips as shown in Hohl 2,141,000 is provided in panels, each panel comprising a perimeter frame, in addition to the rows of glass blocks with the horizontal and vertical separator strips.